Georgia Bridges of Lewes FC has more than a goal against Huddersfield Town to celebrate after the club’s decision to give equal pay to both men’s and women’s teams.
Photograph: Lewes FC

Nestled in the South Downs is an unusual town with an anti-establishment history and ethos. Temporary home to Tom Paine in the 18th century, Lewes is known for being descended upon by tens of thousands every year who join in with the bonfire night celebrations of the town’s seven bonfire societies. Last year Donald Trump effigies were in vogue. In 2007 a giant seagull representing Brighton & Hove Albion was torched, a statement about the potential proximity of the Seagulls’ new stadium in Falmer. They have a sense of humour.

It makes sense that a rebellious town has a rebellious football club, and Lewes FC revel in the label. As Charlie Dobres, a board member, puts it: “With Brighton & Hove Albion just down the road and in the Premier League, a club like Lewes has to be about more than just winning on the pitch. That has a very narrow sense of meaning and doesn’t appeal to enough people. It appeals to football fans but it doesn’t connect with the town.”

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With a constitution that enshrines community benefit at its heart, the latest step of the small fan-owned football club hit the headlines on 12 July after the board announced that agreement had been reached to establish pay and funding parity between their men’s and women’s teams. It has sparked a debate across football. A bold campaign branded “Equality FC” launched with a powerful video in which they claim to be the first professional or semi-professional side to make the move.

It is not the first time Lewes FC have led the way in women’s football. They campaigned heavily for promotion between the Women’s Premier League and Women’s Super League when the WSL was first established and membership was licensed. Sheffield, Brighton & Hove Albion and now Tottenham have all benefited from that campaign. They dropped Ladies from their name just before Arsenal’s recent high-profile switch away from the antiquated term. Their women’s team also use the club’s main pitch for games alongside the men’s team.

It was the community remit that fed the financial change: “The evolution and revolution of the women’s side here had to happen because you can’t honestly say that you’re a community benefit society if half the population are not being treated equally,” Dobres said.

The director of women’s football, Jacquie Agnew, who founded the women’s team 15 years ago, was sold on the concept that has become the core message of Equality FC: “Lewes football club is a parent, why would you invest more in your boy than your girl?

“It just made sense. Some people use crowd size and revenue as barriers to equality but they are red herrings. They are the way they are because women’s football has been held back for so long. We looked at the equal funding in cycling, at Billie Jean King’s fight for equal prize money in tennis and we saw our women putting in just as many hours as the men and thought: ‘Why wouldn’t you?’”

The decision also had to pass the board of 10. “Whilst there was a majority saying absolutely, you always get one or two that take convincing,” says Agnew. “It does put the brakes on a bit because you start having conversations about the risks and challenges. It can be tricky because you’re so excited that you’re just about to crack this almighty ceiling and yet you’re having to have conversations that might hold you back from doing it. That was difficult.”

Some may question whether this parity is achievable only when a club’s ownership model is not solely motivated by profit. But Dobres is not sold on that: “This is as much a business decision as well as being the right thing to do,” he says. “It will make you money. If an owner likes making profit they should invest in their women’s team. Even if you can’t stand women’s football, even if you’re the biggest sexist imaginable, the profit motive says invest in your women’s team.”

And he is right, the profitability of the men’s game can only go so far and grow so big. The avenues for growth are becoming smaller and much more competitive. That is why the biggest European clubs spend so much time trying to crack new markets in Asia and the US. In its infancy women’s football offers huge money-making potential.

The FA chief executive, Martin Glenn, has pointed out in recent months that: “It’s expensive but I maintain any pound spent on the women’s game has a far higher rate of return than just about anything else I can spend.”

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Dobres thinks the problem is more about short-term profits taking a hit. “You won’t make a return in one year, or even two or three, but no sensible business should expect to make a return that quickly. However, you will make a return in the five- to 10-year period and after that you will have a very mature revenue generating product. It’s about levels of patience and understanding how long it takes investments to come off.” Lots of clubs are just not willing to make that financial commitment.

For Lewes, who are not just redistributing existing funds – they plan to raise the level of investment and pay of the women through increasing their income – it is “costing in the high tens of thousands”.

“Sponsorships are crucial and increasing ownerships, a crucial revenue stream for a democratically owned club, are going up. But we have to make it sustainable. There is no point in doing it for two, three or four years and then saying: ‘Oh, that was nice but we’ve run out of money,’” Dobres said.

“We did have an operating budget, but it’s increased tenfold because of the pay parity,” said Agnew.

Both board members are bullish about what the FA should be doing to grow women’s football. Agnew thinks there is an onus on sponsors to say: “I’m only going to give you this money if you split it between men’s and women’s football.” This is the kind of boldness she believes is needed to go beyond the “tiny little growth we see officially. When you dive deeper into it you question whether the sport is actually growing at all.”

Dobres explains: “It’s actually declining at grassroots level, once a week participation for 16- to 25-year-olds has gone down at exactly the same time that investment has gone in at the top.”

There are a number of reasons for that. “If you invest a lot of money at the top, the accidental consequence is that you make an even bigger gap to the bottom.” Another problem is that the “FA is giving money to men’s clubs to drive the growth of the women’s game. Their investment which aims to get more women playing is being put into football league clubs because they are high profile and have the facilities.”

“But they don’t have the coaches, the passion or the pathways that exist in the grassroots and intermediate women’s game,” interjects Agnew.

“If you consider the whole of the FA WPL north and south, and the combination of leagues below,” Dobres says. “You’ve got a pretty good national spread. Put the money into them and connect them with the schools. They have the players who can coach, they have other people who can coach and they offer a solid pathway into the game.”

Some say that women’s football needs to generate greater income and garner more media coverage before it can aspire to reach the pay levels of men’s teams. For Dobres, their change is about trying to prompt that growth the opposite way.

“Things need to change. We’ve got to do something so that everything else shifts, otherwise it’s not going to,” he says. When others point to the top and say there is no way you will see a Chelsea Ladies player on £200,000 a week, he is insistent that they should want to, that they should want to reach that level and should put bold plans in place for getting from where they currently are, to that top level, no matter how long a time frame.

The club captain, Kelly Newton, a stalwart of the club since 2004 who has won 18 trophies in that time, is “immensely proud of what the club is trying to do and what it is standing for”. She began playing at nine with a local boys team and, just weeks in, was told girls could not play with boys. Devastated, she had to wait until she was 14 before she was able to find a women’s side she could train with. “I trained with them week in week out but couldn’t actually play any games,” she says. She now juggles football with managing the warehouse of a local logistics company, who also sponsor the team.

Newton is hopeful that Equality FC, which is emblazoned across this season’s shirts, will prompt others to follow suit and will result in improved participation, standards and accessibility. For her personally not much has changed but she hopes that being more attractive to young players and increased attendances will mean that “instead of being a mid-table team we can now be fighting up near the top of the table”.

The manager, John Donohoe, has similar aspirations and explains that “football, for most women players at this level, costs them money. We hope to, at the very minimum, stop that. If players do get a reward for something they love then you’d like to think they’d stay; you’d like to think that people would like to be a part of that commitment from the club.”

It is hard to see Equality FC as anything other than a great move by the club. The discussion around pay in the women’s game has taken a leap forward as a result. The talk is more and more about the hows rather than the ifs and whys as a result of their campaign. A cynic could say it is a PR stunt. But, if this is a PR stunt, and it is one that will improve the wages of women players, then give us more stunts like it.

Talking points

• In Sunday’s FA Women’s Premier League Charity Trophy Tottenham Hotspur Ladies beat an England All-Star team 3-1, Lauren Pickett coming off the bench to grab a hat trick for Spurs. The All-Stars included the former England players Kelly Smith, Marieanne Spacey, Rachel Finnis Brown and Pauline Cope-Boanas among others.

• Orlando Pride thrashed Sky Blue 5-0, with the Brazilian Marta and Alex Morgan both scoring twice, as Pride leapfrogged Seattle Reign into the position for the final play-off spot in the US. North Carolina Courage held on to their lead at the top with a win over Seattle, who have had the league’s top scorer, Megan Rapinoe, ruled out for five weeks after undergoing knee surgery.

• Following England’s impressive Euro 2017 campaign in the Netherlands the FA has announced its intention to bid to host the 2021 European Championships. It has long been rumoured a bid for a major tournament was in the offing, with the FA the biggest spenders on women’s football in Europe. I’m not saying last week’s blog, the day before the announcement, had any sway, but this week my lottery numbers will be: 7, 9, 15, 19, 31, 34

• The FA has also said it will put together a British women’s team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as it did in 2012 and despite initial concerns from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland which stalled a Brazil 2016 team.

• An impressive 8,000 fans watched Club Leon’s 3-1 defeat by Atlas in the new Mexican women’s league, Liga MX Femenil. Pachuca top the inaugural league with three wins in three.

• The midfielder Katie Zelem has left Liverpool Ladies to join the newly launched Juventus women’s team. Kosovare Asllani has moved back to Sweden with Linkopings FC after an 18-month trophy-laden spell with Manchester City.